The Forgotten Menzies: Cultural Puritanism and Australian Social Thought

Recent debates on the social thought of Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, describe his career as a programme either to realise liberalism, conservatism, or liberal conservatism in Australian institutions and national identity. While these analyses have some merit, they fail to capture the historical context of Menzies' age, particularly the kind of Britishness for which he stood, a Britishness compatible with modes of liberalism and conservatism, but far more comprehensive than either of those traditions conceived narrowly as systematic ideologies. We contend that what Menzies was trying to do for much of his career was to reinvigorate what modern historians, and Menzies' contemporary social commentators, identified as a cultural puritan inflexion to British character. Once the nature of this cultural puritanism is understood, Menzies' political ideas, at least up until the Cold War, look less like attempts to promote liberalism or conservatism, and more as a project to reinvigorate a conception of Britishness that many during Menzies' time feared was in mortal danger by the forces of affluence, individualism, and socialism. We focus on his most well-known speech, “The Forgotten People” (1942), and analyse it in the context of many of his other writings, published and hitherto unpublished.     

After Structure Planning: The New Sub-regional Planning in England

The reformed planning system introduced in England in 2004 weakens the position of counties and unitary authorities. Regional bodies and central government have a larger say on the future shape of localities under these arrangements. In particular sub-regional strategies have a much bigger role within the new Regional Spatial Strategies. This paper examines the prospects for the influence of this new tier of planning, based on government guidance about sub-regional planning and on the evidence on emerging practice, particularly in the southern regions of England. The balance of influence of different actors is changing, both between government tiers and in wider governance relations. The prospects for integrated action in spatial terms are changing, as are the relationships to implementation.     

Defending the Faith: Orangeism and Ulster Protestant Identities in Colonial New South Wales

The Orange Order was never as prominent in the Australian colonies as its own publicity asserted and its arguments against the power of Rome in Australian politics and society were more shrill than accurate. However, it held a clearly defined position as a vector of anti‐Catholicism and ultra‐Protestantism in many parts of colonial Australia, and its parades and social gatherings were important spaces for the formation of Australian Protestant identities imbued with varying levels of Irishness. The use of public space meant that the Loyal Orange Institution had a wider impact than their often small numbers might otherwise suggest. With their parades, sermons, public meetings, and demonstrations many Orangemen and women attempted to claim colonial public space not only as Protestant, but as a particularly Irish inflected anti‐Catholicism.